Ehealth Solutions Provider Standardizes Deployments, Improves Resource Management

Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management Customer Solution Case Study

eHealth Solutions Provider Standardizes Deployments, Improves Resource Management

Overview “The Microsoft Office EPM Solution supports us in Country: United States successfully meeting our client delivery Industry: Information technology commitments.” Customer Profile Donna DiCristina, Head of Operations Knowledge Management, MEDSEEK MEDSEEK provides hospitals, provider groups, and managed care organizations with Web portal technologies and consulting services. It has more than 140 Alabama-based MEDSEEK provides more than 600 healthcare employees. organizations with Web portal technologies and consulting Business Situation services to connect physicians, patients, employees, and Disparate employee reporting methods made it difficult for MEDSEEK to consumers. As its projects increased in number and complexity, understand the scope and complexity of project managers lacked a comprehensive view into resources, its project commitments and make informed decisions about resources and schedules, and status. To solve this problem, MEDSEEK scheduling. teamed with Project Hosts to implement an on-demand

Solution Microsoft® Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) MEDSEEK worked with Project Hosts to Solution, which includes Microsoft Office Project Server 2007, implement an on-demand Microsoft® Office Enterprise Project Management Office Project Professional 2007, and Office Project Web Solution and provide better visibility into Access. With the EPM Solution, MEDSEEK can set more projects for more effective project management. accurate client expectations and establish successful, repeatable delivery processes. It also helps the company meet Benefits  Set accurate client expectations milestones, proactively address slips, and manage and  Establish repeatable delivery distribute resources intelligently. processes  Meet project milestones and proactively address slips  Manage and distribute resources intelligently Situation expanded its consulting practice while it Based in Birmingham, Alabama, began to sell larger, broader-based MEDSEEK provides healthcare solutions. “We introduced program organizations with enterprise eHealth management with our larger scale solutions to fully engage and strengthen deployments and needed a tool that would relationships with physicians, patients, help us understand the scope and employees, and consumers. The complexity of our commitments as a whole, company’s comprehensive technology including: What projects are in the platform and strategic consulting services pipeline? What is their status? When are provide the infrastructure and thought they due to launch or complete? Are there leadership for hospitals to deliver powerful issues? Where and when do we have Web portal solutions. With more than 10 resources for new projects?” says Rich years of experience and more than 600 Grehalva, Senior VP of Professional customers, MEDSEEK has the expertise to Services at MEDSEEK. meet the diverse needs of the healthcare “The EPM Solution community. In addition to its Alabama MEDSEEK saw an enterprise project helps MEDSEEK headquarters, the company has offices in management (EPM) tool as an opportunity California and Mississippi. It employs more to have more consistent deployments standardize and fine- than 140 people. across the organization. “We wanted to tune its releases and make sure that if clients purchased an MEDSEEK grew significantly in late 2006 eHealth portal from us and then later came deployments so that and began to look for an enterprise tool back to purchase additional products or we can replicate that would provide a centralized view of its services, that they would have the same many high-value projects. The company experience with us: their project processes and repeat had recently merged with another deployments would be similar, and they successes.” company, which multiplied the number of would get similar status reports. We offerings it managed and sold. With wanted to make sure that they would know Donna DiCristina, Head of Operations disparate reporting through Microsoft® what to expect from us from a delivery Knowledge Management, MEDSEEK Office Excel® 2003 spreadsheet software perspective,” says DiCristina. and Microsoft Office Word 2003, MEDSEEK did not have a comprehensive Ultimately, says DiCristina, “We really view of its commitments. wanted to understand the efforts involved in our processes so that we could fine-tune “With the merger came the management of them, report on them, note trends, and multiple eHealth portals and the need to replicate our successes.” have an enterprise view to strategically assess and manage them,” says Donna Solution DiCristina, Head of Operations Knowledge MEDSEEK worked with Microsoft Gold Management at MEDSEEK. “The company Certified Partner Project Hosts to merger was wonderful from a business implement an on-demand 30-day trial perspective, but it also created some deployment of Microsoft Office Project complexity around trying to reconcile Server 2007 in January 2007. MEDSEEK different processes and deployment was interested in Project Hosts because of standards.” In addition, the company its experience with the Microsoft Office EPM Solution. By using the company’s —such as product managers, quality hosted service model, MEDSEEK assurance employees, engineers, implemented the EPM Solution quickly and designers, and consultants—use the EPM cost-effectively. “That was absolutely the Solution. Project managers use Microsoft right decision and the right way to go,” says Office Project Professional 2007 to manage DiCristina. “Project Hosts has been very, individual projects, and others use very helpful and provided the secure, Microsoft Office Project Web Access. The reliable, high-performance IT infrastructure EPM Solution provides MEDSEEK with a we needed for our EPM deployment; and, solution to manage, prioritize, and deliver we were thrilled at not having to deal with projects and resources in alignment with its the ins and outs of the technology. It was a business objectives. very good decision—we’ve been very pleased with Project Hosts.” Benefits By using the Microsoft Office EPM In choosing the EPM Solution, DiCristina, a Solution, the MEDSEEK sales team can Project Management Professional (PMP) offer more accurate project scheduling and certified through the Project Management forecasting to clients and prospects. The Institute (PMI), weighed her knowledge of company now has a methodology to “We have significantly PMI processes and standards with establish successful, repeatable delivery increased our project company needs. “It was a matter of processes. MEDSEEK can also meet marrying the software business objectives milestones and proactively address slips, status visibility with the with the healthcare business objectives and while it manages and distributes resources EPM Solution. finding a tool that could reconcile these more intelligently. with project management best practices,” Rich Grehalva, Senior VP of Professional she says. “After evaluating another solution Set Accurate Client Expectations Services, MEDSEEK that did not meet our needs, we found that MEDSEEK uses the EPM Solution to the Microsoft Office EPM Solution had a lot provide prospects and clients with accurate of the specific features we needed. For scheduling and forecasting. “As we were in example, we wanted to be able to track and the sales cycle and working with our manage project proposals, as well as track prospects that would ultimately become administrative and non-project tasks using clients, they were always asking when they timesheets. Those two pieces were could have deliverables and what our important to us.” timeline looked like,” says DiCristina. “We really wanted to educate and empower our After the 30-day trial phase, the companies sales team so that they could structure and deployed the on-demand EPM Solution on set expectations with clients around a wider scale. MEDSEEK completed a timelines and processes. The Microsoft “train the trainer” session in March 2007 Office EPM Solution supports us in and conducted a pilot deployment between successfully meeting our client delivery March and May 2007. Upon successful commitments.” completion of the pilot, MEDSEEK began to deploy the solution companywide in Establish Successful, Repeatable Delivery early June. All employees involved with a Processes client deployment or product development The company can better track its products’ project and which tasks occupied employee development cycles. “The EPM Solution time. “Individual styles and reporting tools helps MEDSEEK standardize and fine-tune made this very challenging,” says its releases and deployments so that we DiCristina. Templates and the timesheet can replicate processes and repeat reporting in Office Project Server 2007 help successes,” says DiCristina. MEDSEEK understand which activities consume employee time. “Project Server Meet Milestones and Proactively Address 2007 timesheets immediately became a Slips valuable tool from an informational MEDSEEK can consistently meet project perspective, from assigning resources to milestones because, says DiCristina, “The internal development. We’ve gained a very EPM Solution gives our executives a clear understanding of how much time dashboard view of our projects with red, employees are spending in specific areas.” green, and yellow stop lights.” MEDSEEK has implemented several project indicators that display a project’s status at any given time. “We have significantly increased our project status visibility with the EPM Solution. The company can now set more achievable project milestones and proactively address any issues that arise. “We have total company involvement—from executive management all the way down, everybody views the same project schedules,” says DiCristina. “If we notice that there’s a slip or an anticipated slip, we get together to review it and understand the source of the delay.” The EPM Solution shows MEDSEEK that next level of understanding to see what happens behind project plans. “We include client tasks in our status reports, showing the impact of date changes to milestones. This lets us have more timely and informed conversations with clients about the trickle effect of schedule changes and late deliverables,” says DiCristina.

Manage and Distribute Resources Intelligently Prior to implementing the EPM Solution, MEDSEEK resource managers found it difficult to know who was assigned to each For More Information Microsoft Office System For more information about Microsoft Microsoft Office is the business world's products and services, call the Microsoft chosen environment for information work Sales Information Center at (800) 426- that provides the software, servers, and 9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft services that help you succeed by Canada Information Centre at (877) 568- transforming information into impact. 2495. Customers who are deaf or hard- of-hearing can reach Microsoft text For more information about the Microsoft telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) Office system, go to: 892-5234 in the United States or (905) www.office.microsoft.com 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please For more information about the Microsoft contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. Office EPM Solution, go to: To access information using the World www.office.microsoft.com/epmsolution Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com

For more information about Project Hosts products and services, call (800) 507- 2819 or visit the Web site at: www.projecthosts.com

For more information about MEDSEEK products and services, call (205) 982- 5800 or visit the Web site at: www.MEDSEEK.com

Software and Services  Technologies  Microsoft Office − Microsoft Office Project Web Access − Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007 Partners − Microsoft Office Project Server 2007  Project Hosts

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Document published June 2008